From: Brian S. Julin <bri@tull.umassp.edu>
  To  : James Simmons <jsimmons@edgeglobal.com>
  Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 15:52:21 -0400 (EDT)

Re: VC Switching

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, James Simmons wrote:
> > I for one don't buy the "56M card" rational for killing VC switching
> > while in graphics mode.  Most apps won't use nearly that much of
> > the card's RAM.  In fact, a 56M card whose driver could protect it's 
> > memory area would allow us to stow away several VC's worth of fb
> > data *in video RAM* simultaneously; perhaps even to allow drawing
> > by several apps on their fb data whether or not their VC is 
> > focused.  Maybe even eventually allowing card<->disk DMA transfer
> > directly into the swap partition as needed -- who knows.
> 
> No. Thats not what I'm saying. VC are no problem to allow switching. For
> fbcon a text buffer is tsored and when a VT switch happens the text buffer
> is read and then translated to pixel images. So with fbcon you still can
> use the 4Kb text buffers of VTs. What I am saying is that once you open
> fbdev and are using it for graphical purposes that you can't vt switch.

You're mistaken that I misunderstand, and perhaps aren't understanding me :).
Please re-read the above more slowly.

> Now you can if you chose save a image of fbdev and close fbdev then vt
> switch.

What I'm saying is that that solution is inferior.  But, it is the best 
course of action for the present.

--
Brian